To double-tap or not to tap? Which is it? John Leake put this excellent stack out on the double-strike on the 'narco' boat off Trinidad Caribbean & he raises serious questions re Hegseth & this

operation as to legality & was it legal, or needed? Double Strike on Trinidad Bound Boat; Leake is bold & brave here & I like it, hat-tip to John, and yes we are in Asymmetric warfare & we want

to be on the side of good always!

Why you must take people like Leake serious is because POTUS Trump is now on record saying he as POTUS would have not done that second strike had he been there, or one can assume making the decision at that time, he says he knows nothing about it. Yet do we usually use ‘double taps’ in offense? Is this something Obama, Bush, Clinton, Biden et al. have done as POTUS and the US military under them? Is this more about besmirching Trump? Have both Democrat and Republican POTUS in the past approved this and used this? And no one cared then? Maybe military uses this to hit the enemy 90% to the draw out the bad guys to come and then double-tap to finish them ‘all’ off? In other words, is the double-tap a usual military strategy? Used normally? I am no expert and asking.

Leake raises some good points and no doubt is raising antibodies etc. to his view on this.

Hat-tip John!

‘Strike On Trinidad Bound Boat

It’s hard to make sense of the double aerial strike on a peñero fishing boat heading from Venezuela to Trinidad and Tobago.”’

Is Leake correct in his apprehension? Did we go too far? Were innocent people killed? Leake:

link: Bizarre Double Strike On Trinidad Bound Boat

Start here:

‘For a nation that sports the greatest navy in history, the U.S. government acted pretty weird in its decision to “double tap” a peñero fishing boat heading from San Juan de Unare, Venezuela to Trinidad and Tobago.

Note that the vessel doesn’t even have a bimini to protect the occupants and cargo from sun and rain, never mind a cabin for sleeping or even a simple cargo hold. From Tobago, the shortest distance to the mainland US (Miami) is 2,200 miles.

I wonder how the Joint Interagency Task Force - South (JIATF-S) could have known for sure that the boat was running drugs bound for U.S. coke sniffers.

Was the cargo positively identified from aerial photography, or is there a human intelligence source in San Juan de Unare who is thought to be completely reliable?

Note the U.S. has good diplomatic relations with Trinidad and Tobago. Why not work with their well-organized coast guard to interdict maritime drug smuggling from Venezuela?

Does the JIATF-S have intelligence about the smuggling route from Trinidad and Tobago after initial transfers from Venezuela? If so, why not interdict the cargo after it leaves Trinidad and Tobago?

After blasting the boat the smithereens, what was the rationale for murdering the survivors clinging to the wreckage by hitting them with a second missile strike?

In my decades of studying naval history, I’ve never heard of such a thing. Apart from cutthroat pirates, there is a long tradition among seafaring peoples to render aid to helpless men clinging to wreckage, even among warring powers following the exchange of fire in naval combat.

Indeed, the British government raised an enormous stink about the Nerbudda Incident in 1842, when the British vessel Nerbudda, carrying troops and supplies for British forces during the First Opium War, was shipwrecked on the coast of Taiwan. The First and Second Opium Wars were a result of England’s policy of smuggling opium into China from India in an aggressive campaign to foster widespread Chinese addiction.

Chinese officials were enraged by this state of affairs and therefore decided to execute the crew of the Nerbudda. British diplomats protested that the incident was a case of cold blooded murder.

The Nerbudda Incident received international press coverage expressing outrage and calls for the adoption of international norms to protect shipwrecked seaman. The 1858 Treaty of Tientsin includes such provisions.

Blasting fishing boats off the coast of Venezuela—even if they are suspected of running dope—strikes me as a species of Team America theater, apparently part of a pretext for gaining control of Venezuela’s mineral assets.

The Trump administration should consider that such shabby acts of murder are not only illegal, but deeply unbecoming of a nation that aspires to maintain the idea of honor in its military profession.’

Double Strike on Trinidad Bound Boat

John’s remarks in point form:

1). The type of boat is a long peñero —a fairly shallow draft boat designed for fishing and transporting goods and people in coastal waters, not for long, blue water voyages. That this particular boat (with four outboard motors) is outfitted for speed is evidence that it could be used for drug running among neighboring Caribbean islands, but such a boat is definitely not designed for traversing 2,200 miles of sea between Tobago and southern Florida.

2). The boat was bound for Trinidad and Tobago, not the United States.

3). I am in favor of protecting U.S. borders and coastal waters from all criminals, brigands, pirates, and drug smugglers. However, the Dragon’s Mouth Channel between Venezuela and Trinidad is not part of U.S. coastal waters.

4). Since George W. Bush’s invasion of Iraq under false pretenses, I have been in the habit of questioning the military actions of all U.S. administrations. I am not going to break this habit now just because I have, on the whole, been a Trump supporter.

5). Drug smuggling is the crime of delivering intoxicating substances to a jurisdiction in which in which the illegality of consuming such substances has not dissuaded millions of citizens from consuming it nonetheless. Generally speaking, drug smuggling is regarded as a criminal enterprise, not an act of war. The most significant drug traffickers affecting the U.S. are Mexican cartel bosses, and not a single one of them has been summarily executed by the U.S. government. Multiple cartel leaders have been taken into U.S. custody and stood trial. The U.S. Department of Justice does not seek the death penalty in exchange for their extradition.

6). Because the British government backed opium trafficking into China during the 19th century, the Chinese court regarded it as an act of war during the First and Second Opium Wars. As I mentioned in my original post, when the Chinese executed shipwrecked English sailors during the First Opium War, these killings were characterized by the British government and international press as “cold blooded murders.”

7). The U.S. does not impose the death penalty on drug dealers in the United States, even when they are caught in possession of a large quantity of drugs intended for distribution. Before being sentenced to prison for drug dealing, the evidence against the accused is examined in a trial by an impartial jury.

8). Even if one accepts at face value the assurances of the U.S. government (something I haven’t done since 2003) that the boat crew was smuggling drugs that were eventually bound for the United States, after the vessel was struck by high a explosive that detonated it and set fire to it, it’s not plausible that the two surviving men were in a position “to carry out their hostile mission” to salvage drugs from the wreckage and press on to Miami. If you are sitting in a small boat struck by a military grade high explosive, you will likely suffer the following:

• Primary blast injuries to air-filled organs (ears, lungs, gut) from pressure changes, leading to eardrum rupture, collapsed lungs, and internal bleeding.

• Secondary injuries from flying debris.

• Burns.

It’s also doubtful that any narcotics would have remained intact and useable after being blasted and set alight by a missile.

9). Even if we accept that drug smuggling is an act of war, it is not a practice of naval warfare to execute men from afar after their vessel has already been destroyed and they have been ejected into the water. Had these two men drawn weapons and aimed them at an approaching U.S. vessel, firing upon them a second time would have been justified.

10). Citizens of a civilized nation should always ask probing questions of their government, especially when their government kills people abroad. Governments that claim to have a license to kill people abroad—without having to face scrutiny and probing questions from the citizenry—will invariably abuse this power.

___

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